19 Jun 2012

LabVIEW and AWR Link for Microwave / RF Design Test

LabVIEW has become an invaluable interface for quickly and easily creating automated tests for design verification, validation, production and repair.

LabVIEW has been available for many years and has become one of the industry standards for test development with offering a variety of facilities for different applications.

National Instruments has now added connectivity that allows interconnectivity between LabVIEW and the AWR Visual System Simulator (VSS) software for RF and microwave system design. This enables RF and Microwave developers to increase their productivity by being able to simulate RF designs and then test the realised circuits against the simulated results to ensure that the performance of the hardware circuit performs as expected. The new connectivity enables engineers to better use measurements in the design flow by executing LabVIEW code directly from the AWR design environment.

The new connectivity with the AWR Design Environment enables LabVIEW signal processing capabilities including multi-rate digital signal processing (DSP), wireless standards, modulation, fixed-point math and more to be more widely used. Engineers can also integrate VHDL and LabVIEW FPGA Module code through NI field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based hardware directly into VSS diagrams.

The AWR connectivity to both PXI and traditional RF instrumentation allows easier incorporation of measurement data into simulations so that the development process should become easier and more productive.

This new connectivity is the first major joint development between NI and AWR following the recent acquisition of AWR by National Instruments. Joe Pekarek, Chief Technology Officer at AWR said: “This integration between NI LabVIEW and AWR VSS is the direct result of our first joint initiative. We’re very happy with the new capabilities that LabVIEW co-simulation brings to VSS and are looking forward to further product integration in the future.”

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